Bond Snapped
by Stephen Ratliff
Summary: What if when Spock went into pon-far, T'Pring felt it and took a slightly different course, one that left Spock high and dry and knowing it before he gets fully into it.


**Bond Snapped**

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Title: Bond Snapped

Author: Stephen

Series: TOS

Codes: S/f (T'Pring), S/Ch, au

Summary: What if when Spock went into pon-far, T'Pring felt it and took a slightly different course, one that left Spock high and dry and knowing it before he gets fully into it.

...

Spock had been expecting the message. He'd felt the snap of the dormant pre-bonding with T'Pring's severing. He'd always felt that T'Pring was aloof, a high and mighty personality that he'd come to believe was going to make a poor wife for a Star Fleet Science Officer. The illogic of arranging marriages at age seven was one of the few illogical tenets of Vulcan Society, a society that T'Pring had always looked forward to leading. After all, by marrying Spock, she would be in line to be a matriarch to succeed T'Pau, even if it meant bearing a part human child.

So he'd received the message after the fact. Spock felt it was so typical of T'Pring. After all, she'd hid her distaste for Spock's own mother until after the pre-bonding had been made, taking it out of his mother's hands. Spock had almost dissolved the bound himself, when he felt T'Pring's distaste for his mother, who she thought never should have the opportunity to be the Vulcan matriarch.

The message left him with one big problem. T'Pring had left him at the worst possible moment from Spock's point of view, as the heat of the mating urge was growing. The snap of the pre-bond had cooled it momentarily, but he knew it was raising again, and there were no Vulcan females on board. So he tried to meditate, to put it off as long as possible, an ultimately fruitless task, but barricaded in his room it was all that was left to him on the Enterprise. He would last as long as possible before the madness took him and he died.

...

Nurse Christine Chapel was worried about Commander Spock. Spock had long been known for his dedication to his job, and it was rare that he didn't pull a double shift. However the last two days he'd barely been seen on duty. His Assistant Science Officer had let slip that Spock had some sort of project he was working on that required his upmost concentration, so he was working on it in his room.

That didn't fit with the times that Chapel had observed Spock in the last 48 hours. He'd barely touched his food at dinner, but it wasn't the usual way that would happen. This time he'd been distracted, his attention wandering. Spock had even eaten ham in his salad, the one meat of all meats that he found most offensive. He'd just taken it from the prepared counter, and hadn't looked at it at all. Then he hadn't even reacted when he swallowed it.

There wasn't much on Spock in his medical records, personally. In fact, the only detail of the like was his favorite soup. So she'd made a bowl of plomeek soup and headed to his quarters with the orange broth. It was after all, her duty as senior nurse to administer preventive medicine, and there was nothing like a good bowl of soup to loosen up the worries of the soul. Her crush on him had nothing to do with her actions, she believed.

...

When the door opened to Spock's quarters, he did not react at first, so deep he was in his meditation. The scent of the plomeek soup was enough to draw him out of it. He looked down to discover it placed on the table in front of him. The scent of the orange soup was enticing, he'd never been able to stop it from pulling him out of his meditation. A silver spoon slid into the bowl, and he looked up.

The nurse's outfit gave way to the blond hair and face of Nurse Chapel. As their eyes locked, Spock began to mentally curse his meditation. Meditation brought his mental disciplines to the forefront of his mind, and his mind had just locked into Nurse Chapel's, no Christine's. He couldn't stop it. His open mind connected to hers, seeking to establish the other end of his broken bond in Christine's.

He found acceptance unexpectantly in her gaze. Christine sat down opposite him, and his right hand reached out to touch her face over bowl of soup. She returned the motion, and answered the bond's query, binding him to her, wordlessly. It was unnecessary to speak. The bond was all encompassing. It filled them both, and he drew strength from it, the urge to mate temporarily overwhelmed by the feeling of her mind against his. He knew it would return, but with his new bondmate, he wasn't worried about it.

...

Solkar looked at his parents. He never could figure out what made his mother's plomeek soup a special treat. As they sat across from each other and shared a bowl, he shook his head. "Mom, Dad, can I go out and play with Saavik?"


End file.
